I have tried several times to see your man here, but have
not caught him in. His place is three miles from my rooms, & it is
like Orion’s thoughtlessness to put business in my hands when he
knows I abhor everything in the nature of business & don’t
even attend to my own. I will have to get even with him for this, somehow. He
could have this all attended to by writing to the man instead of to me. Time
presses me mighty hard, here, & you know it destroys a whole day to
make only a single visit in New York. However, Judge Dixson stays within 3
blocks of the Bowling-green, & he is going to attend to it for you.
He will do it right, too, & I would be apt to do it wrong.1

I am going down to Washington next week, I think,
& shall be there a month, no doubt.2

Several newspaper men have called on me & made me
good offers—a little above what they pay anybody [else.]in my line—but I have not closed with any of them
yet.3 The Californians in town have almost [p] induced me to lecture, but I’ll not do it yet. I
won’t until I have got my cards [stocked ]to suit me. It is too hazardous a business for a stranger. I am not going
to rush headlong in & make a fiasco of the thing when I may possibly
make a success of it by going a little slow.

Give a “God bless you” to all my old
friends if any still abide in Keokuk, & receive thou my blessing
also, my sister.

1
Clemens’s “rooms” at the Metropolitan
Hotel during January were not “three miles,” but
only one and a half miles north of Bowling Green. By 2 February,
however, Clemens had moved further uptown, for he mentioned in an Alta dispatch of that date that he was living
“in East Sixteenth street,” an address that would
put him easily two and a half miles from Bowling Green. In the same
dispatch, he also said that “Judge Dixson ... of
Carson” was then in the city, and he groused that in New York
you could not “accomplish anything in the way of business,
you cannot even pay a friendly call, without devoting a whole day to
it. . . . Many business men only give audience from eleven to one;
therefore, if you miss those hours your affair must go over till next
day” (SLC 1867 [MT00525]). The contents of the dispatch
and of this letter are so similar that it seems likely Clemens wrote
both on about the same date. Orion’s
“business” presumably concerned his stock in the
Mount Blanc Gold and Silver Consolidated Mining Company, which operated
its mine at American Flat, near Virginia City, and maintained a
secretary (or agent) in New York—Edmund G. Sheppard, whose
office was at 2 Bowling Green. In July of the previous year, while still
in California, Orion had asked for an “advance”
against what the trustees expected to receive for one-half of his stock
in the mine, in order to pay for the trip home and for whatever
arrangements he was attempting to make concerning the Clemens
family’s Tennessee land (Wilson 1866, 923; OC to Joseph A. Byers, 12 July
66, author’s copy, CU-MARK). He and Mollie arrived in New York on 19
September, where they had a “wandering, sight-seeing stay of
a few days.” Orion may then have visited Sheppard (as he had
promised trustee Joseph A. Byers he would) in order to reassure Sheppard
that his motive for selling was not skepticism about the mine
itself—a necessary step, since that had been his reason in
1864 for resigning as president of the company (“Passengers
Arrived,” New York Tribune, 20 Sept
66, 3; OC 1866; OC to L. G. A. Coursolles, 26 Aug 64,
author’s copy, CU-MARK). Orion spent all of January and February
in Tennessee, attending to the family property there (OC 1867 [bib10318],
OC 1867 [bib10319]1867 [bib10320]). Presumably
his expenses now obliged him to ask for another advance against part or
all of his remaining stock. He may have asked for Clemens’s
help through Mollie, who was staying with her parents in Keokuk.
Clemens, in turn, entrusted this delicate matter to a friend: Judge
Edward C. Dixon of Carson City. Orion had known Dixon well since at
least August 1862, when they were both elected trustees of
Carson’s First Presbyterian Church. Dixon had served as
probate judge of Ormsby County from December 1861 until July 1863, when
he resigned on being appointed county commissioner; and in 1864 he
represented Lander County in the territorial House of Representatives
(Angel, 215, 529; “The
Territorial Legislature,” Virginia City Evening Bulletin, 8 Jan 64, 3).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2
Clemens did not go to Washington, but remained in New York until his
departure for St. Louis on 3 March (SLC 1867 [MT00533]). He implied in a later letter
that one aim of this February plan was to “gouge”
a government office for Orion out of Senator William M. Stewart (7 June 67 to JLC
and family).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3
Within a month, however, Clemens had “closed” with
at least three such offers. On 3 March the Sunday
Mercury published “The Winner of the
Medal” by “that prince of humorous sightseers,
Mark Twain, whose contributions to California light-literature have
gained him a front-rank position among the sparkling wits of the Land of
Gold” (SLC 1867 [MT00512]). It was to be the first of
seven sketches Mark Twain published in the Mercury that year, the last being “Jim Wolf and the
Tom-Cats,” published on 14 July. Clemens recalled in 1900
that “early in 1867” he was “offered a
large sum to write something for the Sunday
Mercury, & I answered with the tale of ‘Jim
Wolf & the Cats’”—evidently
forgetting the other six sketches, which show the strain of adjusting to
an eastern audience. He also remembered that he “collected
the money for it—twenty-five dollars,” which
“seemed over-pay.” It seems a fair surmise that
publishers William Cauldwell and Horace P. Whitney paid Mark Twain
twenty-five dollars for each of the seven sketches in their Sunday Mercury, which had a circulation of about
65,000 at this time (Wilson 1866, 173, 750, 1082; Rowell, 177; SLC 1900, 30; see also SLC 1867 [MT00519], 1867 [MT00523], 1867 [MT00528], 1867 [MT00531], 1867 [MT00543], 1867 [MT00545]). On 5 March the sturdy and
profitable Evening Express published
“Barnum’s First Speech in Congress” on
page one. Nothing is known of Mark Twain’s arrangements, if
any, with editor and publisher James and Erastus Brooks, and nothing
else by Mark Twain has been found in the Express,
which had a circulation of under 5,000 (SLC 1867 [MT00513]; Wilson 1866, 127, 750; Rowell, 172). On 7 March the New
York Weekly announced that it had “made an
engagement with the celebrated ‘Mark Twain,’ the
California wit and humorist, who will furnish us with a series of his
inimitable papers.” Beginning with the following issue it
published five of Mark Twain’s letters from the Sandwich
Islands (the last on 27 June), without mentioning that they had already
been published in the Sacramento Union. Clemens
classed the New York Weekly among the papers that
paid “splendidly,” but nothing more precise is
known about what proprietors Francis S. Street and Francis S. Smith
offered him for the opportunity to reprint some of his work. Street and
Smith, however, made no secret about their “liberal use of
money in securing the best literary talent,” or about the Weekly’s circulation, which was, for
example, publicly attested at 92,695 copies for the 16 May issue (1 June 67 to JLC
and family; Street and Smith’s New York Weekly: “Another New
Engagement,” 7 Mar 67, 4; “A Galaxy of
Talent,” 6 June 67, 4; “Our
Circulation!” 13 June 67, 4).